The history woman

Before biography was fashionable, Antonia Fraser made the past popular. Her private life has been a source of fascination. But the former Tory MP's wife who converted to Catholicism and votes Labour knows what it means to be an outsider

If you are passing through a British airport this summer the chances are you will see Antonia Fraser's latest book, a biography of Marie Antoinette, prominently displayed in the bookshops. It is part of an extensive price-cutting promotion that includes Anne Robinson's memoirs and a particularly salacious biography of Madonna. The presence of Fraser's scholarly and critically lauded book in this company is another indicator of just how far-reaching is the current explosion of interest in history in Britain.

David Starkey got better viewing figures than Ali G for his latest television series, The Six Wives of Henry VIII; Simon Schama has picked up £3m in a deal with the BBC, and Antony Beevor's books continue to fly off the shelves. But it is not just fashion that has propelled Antonia Fraser into the mass market. Her first bestseller came in 1969 with her biography of Mary Queen of Scots and she has been a regular on the bestseller lists ever since.

"I've seen several booms and busts in the subject and for many years I didn't write 'fashionable' history just because I wrote biography," she explains. "But I was never tempted to change tack. I believe in the wheel of fortune, which was a 15th-century concept that Catherine of Aragon also believed in. Put crudely in modern terms, what goes up must come down and vice versa."

It is now nearly 50 years since Fraser, who is 70 next Tuesday, published her first history book, a retelling of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. Amanda Foreman, whose 1998 life Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire established her in the front rank of a group of talented younger historians, says that the current crop of history superstars owe Fraser a debt of gratitude. "She deserves a place in the history of history because she kept the flame of narrative history alive when everyone else was trying to blow it out. At one point she seemed dated, but now narrative is firmly back in fashion and she has outlasted her critics."

Peter Furtado, editor of History Today, adds that, "over the years, Fraser has also done a terrific job of promoting history. Nowadays you might not think that history needs promoting, but until four or five years ago that wasn't the case at all and for a long time she was very good at being a figurehead."

Bob Gottlieb, former editor of the New Yorker, was Fraser's editor in America. He stresses the international reach of her reputation. "Starting with Mary Queen of Scots she has been very big news in America," he says. "She is critically well considered and well situated in the literary world. She knows everybody and is as well known in America as she is in England, which is something you can't say about too many writers."

The scale of her success has meant that Fraser's work has not gone unchallenged. As someone who has always operated outside the academy, she has suffered a certain amount of sniping from within it. Typical is a review of her 1986 book, The Gunpowder Plot, that grudgingly acknowledged a "compulsive quality" in her books and "an ultimate integrity, that make them fitfully compelling", but went on to complain, "while she spasmodically illuminates the subjects of her early modern biographies, she has yet to illuminate the age."

Foreman counters by saying that "Fraser brings a completely sure hand to everything she writes. A lot of historians have flair and panache but in the end it turns out that it wasn't 1810 it was 1812, and it wasn't the 5th tank brigade but the 11th. You never have that with Antonia Fraser. When she says Marie Antoinette wore green you know that she wore green." The biographer Michael Holroyd says Fraser typifies "the amateur tradition in the best sense. She was attacked by the distinguished Cambridge academic, and uncle of Ben, Sir Geoffrey Elton. He resented biography because it concentrated too much on the individual and he didn't like the idea of a non-professional trespassing on his patch. But when he tried to attack her, her scholarship was always good enough to withstand it. And in reality a lot of non-fiction written by outsiders actually revives genres, giving them life and vividness."

The vividness of her own life - lived out mostly at the junction where the political, social and intellectual establishments meet - has been a source of much fascination. From an aristocratic English background she was plucked, as a glamorous young writer, to be a regular on television book programmes; as a political and social activist she has promoted a series of progressive campaigns; as a socialite she was cast as a femme fatale with her 1970s affair with Harold Pinter, whom she married in 1980, precipitating a tabloid frenzy.

As one observer put it, "she has managed to live an 18th-century life in the 20th century, and she's done it without becoming an anachronism." Foreman describes her as "gracious and statuesque, but she is one of those women where there is a lot going on behind those eyes. She really has lived a life. I'm fascinated by people who are absolutely multi-layered. And she is definitely one of those."

Antonia Pakenham - pronounced Packenham not Paikenham - was born in London in 1932, the first of eight children of Frank Pakenham, later Lord Longford, and Elizabeth Harman, who as Elizabeth Longford went on to write several acclaimed historical biographies herself. Two of Antonia's siblings, Rachel Billington and Thomas Pakenham, are also distinguished authors, Anthony and Lady Violet Powell were her aunt and uncle and three of Antonia's own daughters are published writers. Bob Gottlieb, at one time editor to Elizabeth Longford, Antonia Fraser and her daughter Flora, says, "I was sort of their court editor, and it is astonishing how many of that family write. More so how good they all are."

Fraser takes pains to point out that writing was not the family trade when she was growing up. Her mother didn't publish until Antonia was 35. "When I wrote Mary Queen of Scots I said it was all me. When Flora then wrote a book and people asked me whether it was hereditary I said 'yes, of course it is'. But I always wanted to make my own friends and go my own way. Family relationships are just that. Your career is something else."

She admits she used to swap manuscripts with her mother until she lost her sight, but now "I mainly give them to Harold. He has the advantage of knowing no history - his words - but has an incredible editorial brain quite apart from his well known creative gifts. So when he says 'I must be a bit stupid, but I don't understand', it's no use me saying 'you are very stupid' - I know I have to alter something."

In fact the family trade was politics, and Fraser remembers canvassing and filling envelopes as both her mother and father stood, unsuccessfully, as Labour parliamentary candidates. It was after her father was defeated by Quintin Hogg for the Oxford seat in 1945 that he was sent to the House of Lords by Clement Attlee and Antonia was accorded the courtesy title of Lady.

The family had been brought up in Oxford where Frank Pakenham taught politics at Christ Church. They were not wealthy (although from an aristocratic background Frank, as a second son, inherited little money), but the family was well connected. Fraser recalls the house always "full of dons" and friends such as Hugh Gaitskell, JM Keynes and William Beveridge. "And there was Isaiah Berlin, who was always so charming to everybody, including children. John Betjeman ditto. But I didn't see it as a privilege to grow up amongst these people. I was more concerned that there wasn't enough money for all of us children to have a bicycle and things like that."

Fraser says that it was her mother who ruled the home. "My father didn't drive and he didn't carve, but he was wonderful and sweet and I remember singing the words 'meek and mild' as a child and thinking of him. I often disagreed with him but he was always worth two of his critics." She says that, although he was later made a figure of public ridicule for his views on pornography and the rehabilitation of notorious criminals, "I didn't mind because he didn't mind. He was totally without fear and luckily he lived long enough to go through that, and when he died last year he received wonderful obituaries."

She says her mother, who is still alive, was more quick-tempered but had a "tremendous respect for education. Being top of the form was how I pleased her." Fraser was sent to the Dragon School in Oxford - where she played rugby - as one of only 20 girls out of 400 pupils. There was then a brief and unhappy spell at a C of E boarding school in Salisbury before she moved to St Mary's Convent in Ascot after her mother converted to Catholicism in 1946.Her father had converted in 1940.

"All credit to my parents, they left it up to me whether I wanted to convert or not. It was never discussed but they were obviously pleased when I decided to do it." She now attends a sung Latin mass most Sundays but is a moderniser. "I believe very strongly that the time for women priests has come. They have been a great success in the Anglican church and the church has changed its stance on things like usury and slavery so I hope it will change its stance on this. And maybe one of my 11 granddaughters will be a priest."

She describes herself as a subversive rather than a rebellious child, and says she enjoyed being a Catholic from a Labour family in the largely Anglican and Conservative circles she moved in. "More than it might seem from my CV, I know what it is like to be an outsider, although within an admittedly narrow compass."

After school Fraser took a series of odd jobs - accounts typist, Fenwick's hat department - before going to a crammer and then, in 1950, to Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, to read history. She met Marigold Johnson there on their first day and they have remained friends. Johnson says Fraser's "chequered history by the standards of the time; working in Fenwick's and having been to night clubs," lent her an air of glamour. "She wasn't one of the great Oxford beauties, but she was glamorous. And interesting figures from her London life would pursue her and take her out to dinner in Oxford which I was jealous of."

Fraser says she didn't enjoy her time at Oxford. "I was idle, which was all right, and pleasure-bent, nothing wrong with that. But it's not how I wanted to be and from the moment I left Oxford I started to work very hard and I've worked very hard ever since." The family assumed that she would have a career and when publisher George Weidenfeld asked her mother if she knew a bright person to work for him she suggested Antonia. "I used to invent job titles for myself; editor, foreign languages editor, publicity director, but it was all me. And George was inspiring. He spoke eight languages, at a time when everyone in Britain seemed so provincial."

Weidenfeld remembers the young Fraser as "very bright and extremely accomplished. She was independent, sociable and had an omnivorous curiosity. Hardly had she started with us than she began to write. We had a contract from Marks & Spencer to produce illustrated children's classics. I asked her to tell the story of King Arthur afresh so she went to the British Museum and did a 70,000-word book in six weeks. It's still in print, and the year after she did the same for Robin Hood."

Fraser also ghosted the memoirs of Christian Dior before retiring from publishing aged 24 following her marriage to the Scottish Catholic aristocrat and Conservative MP Sir Hugh Fraser. They had six children in 10 years. Remarkably, five of her mother's eight children and five of her own were delivered by the same midwife. Her eldest daughters Rebecca and Flora have both written biographies. Her eldest son, Benji, works for the Bank of New York and her youngest daughter, Natasha, has completed a life of Hollywood producer Sam Spiegel, to be published later this year. Damian works for Warburg's in Mexico and her youngest son, Orlando, is a barrist-er specialising in commercial law. She has 16 grandchildren.

As an MP's wife she visited the Lords and Commons to see her father and husband, but did the minimum of constituency work. "But now the role of even Conservative MPs' wives is changing which is why I find the occasional controversies about Cherie Blair both interesting and ridiculous. I am very pro-Cherie Blair. With her career she is breaking the mould and I approve of that."

Famously, Fraser did not cook or shop, but she did continue to write - "articles for places like the Sunday Express on things like how to behave as a weekend guest". She produced a book about dolls in 1963 and three years later a history of toys. But it wasn't until Weidenfeld suggested that she write a "proper biography" that she embarked on Mary Queen of Scots. Fraser started researching the book after her fifth child was born and started writing it after the sixth. "And the baby seemed to like the sound of my typewriter. The more I typed the more he slept, so on I went." She copied a technique of working from Robert Blake, whose 1966 biography of Disraeli had been a huge success. "I was told that he did all his research and then put it to one side and wrote the book straight through. Only then did he correct it, and I thought that sounded such a good plan that I've done it ever since. But some years later I sat next to Blake at a dinner and I thanked him for this and he said he's never worked like that in his life."

Mary was published in 1969 and went on to be a bestseller in 11 languages. Fraser says her life changed overnight. "One moment I was that writer people would vaguely say of 'is she writing a novel or something?' and the next I had this bestseller. I thought the book might be seen as quite long and boring, so I was surprised. But it is something Harold and I, whose life changed overnight with The Caretaker, have in common."

Fraser met Pinter in 1975, and later that year they found themselves at the centre of a storm of gossip complete with a gleeful tabloid dissection of Fraser's sexual history. It was precipitated when Pinter's wife, Vivien Merchant, said she was going to cite Antonia in a divorce action. "I look back on it in absolute amazement," says Fraser. "We were two writers in our 40s who decided to live together. We weren't that interesting. But it was so intense for a while that it probably did scar me and these things inevitably have terrible spin-offs on your family. It is now 27 years ago and I never think about it because so much has happened since. But when I am asked I think 'that really did happen', but Posh and Becks we ain't - although I do think Becks is lovely, better with hair than not, but lovely."

After much public speculation about whether the Catholic Frasers would divorce, their marriage was finally dissolved in 1977 and Antonia married Pinter three years later. As A-list fixtures on the international literary scene ever since, they still live in the Holland Park home she shared with Sir Hugh Fraser, who died in 1984, and it remains the base for her large and scattered family. She says the last year has obviously been difficult with the death of her father, and Harold undergoing surgery for cancer, "but I am very lucky to have so many family attachments. When you're young you don't always feel that, but when you get older you see you are most fortunate."

In the mid-70s she wrote biographies of Cromwell and King James as well as editing a volume of Scottish love poems and one of love letters that added to a vague sense of aristocratic loucheness. In 1977 she published her first thriller, featuring the frightfully chic and intelligent detective Jemima Shore. It was adapted for television the following year. "It was the hot summer of 1976 and I was stuck on my book about Charles II so I wrote Quiet as a Nun in six weeks which was very good fun." In all there have been eight Jemima Shore novels and two collections of short stories.

The crime writer Reg Hill says he always thought "Jemima Shore was Antonia projecting herself, as we all tend to do, as a person 20 years younger - this sophisticated, rather cool character in these 70s and 80s settings. The books are very entertaining and did have something to say about contemporary society without being particularly deep or searching." Hill also praises Fraser's spell as chair of the Crime Writers' Association but says, "I was never sure how seriously she took her crime writing. I thought her relationship to it might have been like those old university dons who wrote crime books under assumed names. Her more serious work was her history."

Fraser, twice a Booker judge, says she is not clamouring for a crime novel to be shortlisted for the prize. Although she is hugely impressed by the work of Hill and Ian Rankin, she says, "I think crime might be a different genre to the novel, if an incredibly honourable one and certainly not an inferior one. It's like I don't think children's books should be listed for the Booker although I'm sure Philip Pullman will be one day. There is something called the novel and I feel I have never written one. I have written crime."

Her King Charles book was eventually published in 1979. The Weaker Vessel followed in 1984 and was seen as something of a departure. Subtitled "Woman's Lot in Seventeenth Century England" it is now regarded as being an early example of a feminist reading of history. Fraser remembers being asked by Hermione Lee on television why The Weaker Vessel wasn't more angry. "But what is the point of being angry," she still contends. "I just wanted to say what happened to these women. Anger is not a good motive. Passion and sympathy are better in my case. It's much better to allow for the reader's response."

In 1992 Fraser published The Six Wives of Henry VIII, followed four years later by The Gunpowder Plot. Despite her Catholic loyalties she says that in the end she was hard-headed about the plot itself. "I didn't come out and say terrorism is a jolly good idea. I just said this is why they did it. I thought about it a lot after September 11th. While completely deploring it in every possible way, you still need to ask why."

As someone who has lived around politics all her life she says she is less interested in ideas than in "the people who led nations and so on. I don't think I could ever have written a history of political thought or anything like that. I'd have to come at it another way." She joined the Labour party soon after Tony Blair became leader but let her membership lapse after the Kosovo campaign. "If there was an election tomorrow I'd vote Labour, but my instinct is to record and observe; although if there is a war against Iraq I'm sure I will march and campaign against it."

Perhaps her best known political intervention was when a group of writers opposed to the then Conservative government met, to much giggling from the rightwing press, at her and Pinter's home in 1988. But she was also president of English PEN, the international writers' association, when the fatwa on Salman Rushdie was announced - which she describes as "both a torture and an honour". She succeeded Michael Holroyd, who says that "she and Harold were very supportive indeed. She was a good foul weather friend when a lot of things had to be done secretly." Fraser also succeeded Holroyd as chair of the Society of Authors and he adds that she was equally reliable in more parochial matters. "You could ask her to do something unglamorous but valuable, like chair a sub-committee. And when we campaigned for public lending rights we sent Antonia to see the minister. She could charm them but give nothing away. She's pretty strong like that."

As a historian working outside the academy Fraser has had to be resourceful and resilient, but she says that in general her freelance status has been an advantage. "It's true that because I'm the daughter of academe I'm not frightened of the whole thing, but I'm also not competing for anyone's job so people are usually happy to help. And I'm quite confident about my own abilities. I've not been criticised for my research."

Professor Jeremy Black of the University of Exeter, who writes extensively on British history, says that "good popular historians are characterised by a determination to check on the information as opposed to regurgitating other people's stuff, and a willingness to make clear that there are different interpretations of events. Antonia Fraser does both and there is a degree of intelligence and maturity in her work that is lacking in, for instance, Schama's somewhat superficial recent treatments on the television."

Fraser says the fact that she wasn't taught history at the Dragon School was, in retrospect, a lucky break. "I regarded the subject as a place I could retreat into. It was obviously a joy to write about it and introduce other people to it, but it was also a private pleasure. It's still that."

She has just begun researching a new book on Louis XIV and the women in his life and clearly relishes the task. "I've just started reading the memoirs of a duke at the court and even the thought of reading his letters delights me. I know in four years or so I may have to write about them, but at that moment of reading I am totally happy."